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Better Together: Alnylam and Organized Customer Health Systems Want to Improve Access and Outcomes
April 26, 2024
Sheri Trutwin
VP of Strategic Accounts, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
More than a decade ago, the United States healthcare system was at a tipping point. When compared to European markets with single-payer systems, the U.S. spent nearly twice as much per person on healthcare while receiving the same or even less quality as measured by outcomes.
As a result of political, economic and consumer influences, over the last 10 years, the U.S. healthcare system has seen a focal shift away from volume of care and toward the value of care provided. The result has been consolidation of care where today more than 90% of the population is receiving care from providers who belong to integrated delivery networks (IDNs).
The rise of the Integrated Delivery Network and Manufacturer Relationship
IDNs are care delivery systems that seek to improve patient care through efficiency, continuity, and the sharing of information and resources. To ensure optimal access and experience for the patient, biopharmaceutical companies like Alnylam are taking a unique approach in how we engage these customers to focus on the challenges that they face in this increasingly common, complex ecosystem.
In 2018, Alnylam received its first product approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – in fact it was the very first approval of an RNAi therapeutic – and in quick succession received FDA approval of three additional RNAi therapeutics over the subsequent three years. Since then, Alnylam has been rapidly scaling its commercial approach to serve an increasing number of patients through its portfolio today, and to maximize an organic pipeline of potentially transformative investigational medicines in rare, specialty and prevalent diseases.
As part of these efforts and in response to today’s landscape, Alnylam partnered with ZS, a management consulting and technology firm focused on transforming global healthcare, to establish its Strategic Account Management program. This cross-functional program aims to identify gaps in the patient journey to co-identify solutions that improve patient experience, patient outcomes, and address total cost of care within these health systems and our communities.
Alnylam has made a commitment to invest in differentiated strategies to effectively engage with these customers as they increasingly focus on these priorities. These strategies have the potential to generate clinically relevant real-world evidence, health economic and patient outcomes data.
Alnylam introduced RNAi therapeutics, an entirely new class of medicines, and we continue to discover and develop medicines that strive to change the face of medicine. Now, with the build of our strategic account management program, we are taking that tenet of innovation to how we can support healthcare systems to deliver better patient outcomes. We are in the early days of developing these partnerships, and I am excited about the work we will continue to do to improve patient access and outcomes." – Sheri Trutwin, Head of Strategic Accounts, Alnylam
Strategic Account Management at Alnylam
Alnylam and ZS worked together to create a systematic and programmatic approach using a five-phase process:
- Engage IDN to understand entity needs / priorities
- Engage IDN to evaluate potential solutions to address needs / priorities
- IDNs develop solutions
- IDNs implement solutions
- IDN and Alnylam collect metrics, assess, and document impact of solution
Examples of IDN solutions
- Diagnostic algorithms
- Alnylam has provided education and resources about the relevant disease states to enable IDNs to leverage internal data, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing for improved identification of rare disease leading to reduction in healthcare resource utilization, faster time to diagnosis and improvement in healthcare disparities.
- Alnylam has provided education and resources about the relevant disease states to enable IDNs to leverage internal data, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing for improved identification of rare disease leading to reduction in healthcare resource utilization, faster time to diagnosis and improvement in healthcare disparities.
- Care pathways & workflow solution solutions
- Alnylam has supported IDNs in their creation of workflow and care pathway solutions that address care coordination, administration, and reimbursement inefficiencies. Alnylam has also supported IDNs seeking to incorporate evidence-based guidelines into the electronic health solutions, which will aim to improve access to medication, improve patient experience, and reduce healthcare burden.
Alnylam’s award-winning team of Health System Directors have more than 75 years of combined expertise in creating and managing relationships with organized customers. They serve as the point-of-contact for a team-based, cross-functional approach to IDN engagements with the goal of helping IDNs identify solutions to address challenges faced by patients, providers and Alnylam. The Health Industry Research Center (HIRC) recently recognized Alnylam Health System Directors for the second year in a row as “Best-in-class” when compared to similar Account Managers across life science organizations.
